1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk drive, and more particularly, to a hybrid disk drive and a method of controlling data stored on the hybrid disk drive.
This application claims the benefit of Korean Patent Application No. 10-2006-0006802, filed on Jan. 23, 2006, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
2. Discussion of Related Art
FIG. 1 is a schematic plan view of a conventional hard disk drive (HDD) 100 which includes at least one disk 120, rotated by a spindle motor 110, and a head 130 located adjacent to the surface of the disk 120. The head 130 can read or write information from or to disk 120 by sensing a magnetic field on the surface of the disk 120 or by magnetizing the surface of the disk. Although a single head 130 is shown in FIG. 1, head 130 includes a write head for magnetizing disk 120 and a separate read head for sensing a magnetic field stored on disk 120. The read head is composed of a magneto-resistive (MR) component and mounted on slider 131. An air support is generated between head 130 and the surface of the disk 120 to allow slider 131 to move across the surface of the disk. Slider 131 is combined with a head gimbal assembly (HGA) 132 attached to actuator arm 140 and having a voice coil 141. Voice coil 141 is located adjacent to magnetic assembly 150 supporting a voice coil motor (VCM) 142. A current supplied to voice coil 141 generates a torque that rotates actuator arm 140 around bearing assembly 160 which causes head 130 to move across the surface of disk 120.
Information is typically stored in concentric tracks on disk 120. In general, each track 170 includes a plurality of sectors where each sector includes a data field and an identification field. The identification field is composed of a Gray code for identifying sectors and tracks (cylinders). Head 130 moves across the surface of disk 120 to read or write information from or to another track. The access speed of an HDD is relatively slow as compared to nonvolatile memory components such as a flash memory device which are typically used to increase the booting speed of computer systems. However, HDD devices do not have a device or method used to control the efficient transfer of data from and to such flash memory devices. The absence of such a device or method compromises data speed of an HDD as well as necessary poser consumption.